If you liked
Books like On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is Ocean Vuong's debut novel — a letter from a young Vietnamese-American man to his illiterate mother across his Hartford childhood, his first relationship with Trevor, and the OxyContin crisis that takes Trevor's life. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Sympathizerby Viet Thanh Nguyen
“The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 review. A communist double agent flees with the South Vietnamese government to Los Angeles in April 1975. Pulitzer Prize 2016 and the canonical contemporary Vietnamese-American novel.”
Crying in H Martby Michelle Zauner
“Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
“Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
Demon Copperheadby Barbara Kingsolver
“Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.”
FAQ
Common questions about On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous read-alikes
- What is the closest match for On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous?
- The Sympathizer. Both Vietnamese-American novels working at the highest contemporary American literary level on the inheritance the war and the migration left for the next generation. Different registers (Nguyen confessional, Vuong poetic) but the project is in the same family.
- I want more Ocean Vuong.
- The Emperor of Gladness (2025, the second novel) is the direct follow-up. Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016, the T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poetry collection) is the literary register Vuong built before the prose work. Both are essential.
- I want another book about queer Asian-American identity.
- The catalog is light on this specific intersection. Outside the catalog, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts are the canonical contemporary literary picks. Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner) is the closest Korean-American match.
- I want a novel about the opioid crisis from the survivor side.
- Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer winner on Appalachian foster-care-and-OxyContin childhood) is the canonical contemporary pick. Empire of Pain (Patrick Radden Keefe's non-fiction investigation of the Sackler family) is the structural counterpart on the producer side.
The original